On May 29, The FIFA Congress saw the culmination in the campaign by the Palestinian Football Federation to give the Israeli federation the red card, by kicking them out of FIFA on charges of player discrimination and institutionalised prejudice at some Israeli clubs.

The UN has released some figures on its peace-keeping efforts worldwide. While the organisation does what it can, it is clear that it - the pre-eminent peace-keeping organisation in the world - is far from making even a scratch on the surface of global conflict.

These figures confirm our reasons for being.

There are 16 current conflicts the UN is working in around the world. The oldest is on the India-Pakistan border (in place since 1949), the newest in the central African republic (2014). Since 1948, there have been 71 UN peace-keeping operations and so, today, just under 23% of all the peace-keeping operations voted as necessary by the UN in 67 years are on-going.

The UN says there are 125,396 peace-keepers in the UN's employ (so-called Blue Helmets).

The budget for peace-keeping in 2014/15 is $US8.5 billion.

It sounds a lot, but consider the following.

The total armed personnel in just the top 20 militarised countries in the world is 1.3 billion. That's one peace-keeper f…